Is there any way to make sense of the masses of materials out there. Mainly the standarised ones. Is there material series for example? based upon a design prinsiple or idea about the qualities they get by having similar percentage ex of carbon..
Materials and the chaos around them
Started by
MatsNorway
, Jun 01 2012 10:50
2 replies to this topic
#3
bigleagueslider
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Posted 03 June 2012 - 04:17
Is there any way to make sense of the masses of materials out there. Mainly the standarised ones. Is there material series for example? based upon a design prinsiple or idea about the qualities they get by having similar percentage ex of carbon..
MatsNorway,
If you are referring to metal alloys, they are gradually becoming standardized in some respects. At one time each country had their own alloy designation systems. Now most fall under the ISO, UNS, ASTM or AMS systems. In the US, the aerospace industry has adopted the AMS system which is maintained by the SAE, and most of the US commercial sector uses ASTM standards.
Of course, many large manufacturers that purchase lots of raw material order the metal alloys customized to meet their precise cost and performance requirements. So these wouldn't be standard alloys.
Interestingly, in the past few years there have been some big leaps forward in metallurgy. There are now some very powerful computational design tools that can accurately predict the characteristics of metal alloy compositions. Previously, small batches of each alloy had to be produced and tested which was very expensive and time consuming. Now, the entire process can be modeled on the computer.
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